On Wednesday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it had issued its first construction approval in nearly a decade. The approval will allow work to begin on a site in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by a company called TerraPower. That company is most widely recognized as being financially backed by Bill Gates, but it’s attempting to build a radically new reactor, one that is sodium-cooled and incorporates energy storage as part of its design.
This doesn’t necessarily mean it will gain approval to operate the reactor, but it’s a critical step for the company.
The TerraPower design, which it calls Natrium and has been developed jointly with GE Hitachi, has
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